Costantino Grasso

Lecturer in Business Management and Law, University of East London

Costantino Grasso is Lecturer in Business Management and Law at UEL, visiting lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and Global MBA module leader for Corporate Governance and Ethics at the University of London.

His foremost areas of research are financial crime, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility and energy law. In particular, in the latest years, he has focused on corporate criminal liability and on the effectiveness of corporate and compliance measures to counter financial crime offences such as bribery and corruption, fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and terrorism financing. He has also conducted comprehensive studies on European criminal law, economic sanctions, corruption in the oil and gas sector, transitional justice, as well as energy trade and governance. His research has always been inspired by the necessity of taking into consideration the protection of fundamental rights and, in particular, the right to a fair trial and due process. He is the author of various articles, chapters and volumes both in English and Italian.

In 2012, he was selected as an international expert and rapporteur for the European Union Project ‘Prevention of fraud, corruption and bribery committed through legal entities for the purpose of financial and economic gain’ led by the T.M.C. Asser Institute in cooperation with the Dutch Ministry of Justice.

Being qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales and as a lawyer in Italy, he has always combined academic activities with legal practice. In 2014, he worked as a corporate governance and compliance specialist for the Serious Fraud Office participating in the first-ever U.K. Deferred Prosecution Agreement between that prosecuting body and ICBC Standard Bank Plc, which concerned a complex case of transnational bribery. On that occasion, he received an award for the substantial input into the success of the agreement and, on 23 November 2016, he was awarded as a member of the case team the UK Government Legal Department's Prosecutor of the Year Award (link).

Costantino Grasso is also competent to provide professional advice and guidance on reputational risk, ABC, AML, and other financial crime compliance matters; to provide independent assurance on the effectiveness of risk management, governance and internal control processes; to counsel in relation to regulatory and criminal investigations; to assist in case of blacklisting procedures; to develop compliance, governance, remuneration and risk management policies; to conduct risk assessment across all aspects of the business process to mitigate financial crime risk.